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Payday was on sale recently, and I’ve been wondering what it was all about. Rutskarn and Jibar (more commonly known by their hip-hop street names: Skarn and J-Bar) played through the game, and it told me everything I needed to know:

So the pitch seems to be something along the lines of “Left 4 Dead styled dynamic gameplay” mixed with “Kane & Lynch styled ugliness, awfulness, and childishness.)

No attempt to make your in-game goals follow any kind of logic. Don’t even get me started on the part where you painstakingly escort a horribly burned man through a downpour of gunfire by pointing a GUN at him because you have no way of getting the briefcase handcuffed to his non-bulletproof hand.

The characters are generic clown-faced idiot men. Is your favorite L4D character Francis? Or perhaps Bill? Maybe you appreciate the chance to play as your own gender with Zoe? Pfft. Screw that. Do you want to be clown-faced guy #1 or clown-faced guy #2? Even stranger that they actually did create four characters, but made three of them brown-haired white men, and one of them a black man. And then hid all their faces behind masks so you can’t tell who is who in the heat of battle. WHYYYY!?!?

Gameplay that doesn’t seem to require or even encourage organization and teamwork. Try playing L4D like this and see how far you get.

Dull foes that border on the offensive. I’m not sure what my threshold for number of police officer widows I want to create in a single game session, but I would say it’s probably less than this. It would help if there was more variety among your foes. Guys with bullet-proof riot shields that can slowly creep closer and closer until you headshot them. Guys with automatic weapons and minimal armor who sprint at you. Throw in an APC with a turret that’s almost impossible to destroy but has limited ammo. Guys rappelling from rooftops. Tear gas. Give the cops some San-Andreas styled combat taunts that show them to be ridiculously overbearing and corrupt tough guys so we can mow them down without needing to be emotionally numb first.

No levity, no personality. A bit of Tarantino-style dialog would have transformed this from an ugly macho slog to a witty, subversive adventure. As it is, you’re just playing boring incompetent jerks who murder hundreds of people because they can’t think clearly.

Underneath the stupidity and primate grunting is a brilliant game, crying to get out.

As I said, I haven’t played it. Maybe it’s pure wacky fun when you’re in the driver’s seat. I remain skeptical.

EDIT: So it sounds like a lot of the different police types I mentioned are actually in the game. That’s good to hear. Still, it FEELS like a march of same-y foes. I’m not sure if they need the specials to show up more often, if they just need a more striking profile, or if Rutskarn needs to go easy on the methamphetamine before they record.

I’m sue it’d have been a lot more interesting if they had GTA style wanted levels. Then they could let you either incapacitate or kill the officers following you, with lethal takedowns raising the wanted level faster than non-lethal ones. Anything to make the game something less repetitive than “shoot all the cops in the city”.

i saw this game on steam for cheap cheap and breifly thought about buying it. but looking at it i felt it was the worst gamin had to offer. It seemed the kind of game the people who think games are bad for you seem to think of. In a way it’d be great if there were humor and levity but all i’ve seen of it is a shallow cop killing murder simulator.

I mean these guys make it fun for eachother, and funny for us. who’s gonna do that for me?

It does look like it could be a good game with some changes, and one thing I noticed is that while some of the characters wear vastly different colours compared to the police, like white, some don’t, meaning you could easily shoot your own guys. They need more brightly coloured outfits that no-one else wears so you can pick them out easily.
There’s also some little things like not being able to clearly tell on the HUD if someone’s being revived, or even the fact multiple people can revive the same person.

While I get that you are criticizing this based on not actually playing it, and to be fair neither have I, watching other videos of it shows that some of your complaints are a little off base.

“4. Dull foes that border on the offensive.”

There are cops with riot shields, cops with massive body armor, the cops with tasers that Ruts ran into a few times. They also use tear gas and do drop in by copter. They include quite a bit of what you wish was in the game. From what I can tell, this is probably the least representative mission of the bunch. The one I saw was an actual bank heist (though admittedly still with a ridiculous amount of enemies for a heist scenario).

“1. No attempt to make your in-game goals follow any kind of logic.”

Again, I think the highlighted scenario is just a bad one. The bank heist I saw included eliminating security cam evidence, drilling through a security gate, burning through the ceiling of the vault to gain access, then blowing out a wall to escape through a neighboring building and get to the getaway van.

As for the aesthetic, I like the masked bank robber look, and it makes more sense than having them run around with their faces exposed. However, that’s more personal preference than anything. Also can’t say much for the level of cooperation required, since I haven’t played it yet.

Anyway, I think it looks like a decently entertaining game that’s probably worth a purchase during a decent Steam sale. Nothing groundbreaking, but not a bad alternative to Left for Dead for those of us who don’t like horror and zombies.

As for the dull enemies, to be fair you can spot even during this mission different kind of enemies, normal cops, tazer security, heavy armoured swat guys, snipers and riot shielded cops. So, at least in that respect, it’s not faulty.
About the mission objective I can only speak from the reviews I’ve seen. There are multistage missions, but it’s not often clear what do you have to do.
I agree, though, with the critic toward character desing, as it is quite flat and undistinguishable. I get that they were going for a reservoir dogs look, with black suits, white shirt, black tie, but for this game doesn’t work really well. But I admit I alway prefer clever design over realistic aesthetics.

Yeah, I thought I remember seeing some of the various cops in Rutskarn’s video, but I think they get lost in all the chaos since this particular mission is mostly “Run like Hell down a street, burn a van for a while, run like Hell to the end.” I also wonder if being leveled up starts to unbalance the game, or if the game compensates for your increased arsenal/skills/whatever else leveling up gives you.

Yeah, at first I was a bit confused, but I picked it up on sale for 10 bucks, and I think it was totally worth it. Maybe 20. 60 would be a bit much though :P.
To answer some points:
#1, most of the heists follow logic. Theres only 6 of them currently, and this one, Heat Street (Ohhh like the Michael Mann movie, briliant…) is one of the worst. Why cant I just cut off his hand? who needs him? Most of the objectives in it are actually logical IIRC.

#2, the 4 guys actually do have defining characteristics and backstories. Not that you would know, because its not actually explained. If you play it for a while, you can tell who each character is by their voice, clothing and their individual masks. For instance, wolf is Swedish and a bit frentic, so when the cops pop smoke, he’ll yell quickly, whereas Chains was a marine, and sounds cool and calm. In the lobby and before you start a heist, you can actually see them without their masks. Which is a cool touch. Admittedley, its nowhere near as well done as L4D.

#3 The game somewhat encourages team work, you can rez each other when you go down, you need to keep certain special cops marked and save each other from their attacks. One bonus you unlock is a bag that you can bring in, that refills ammo or health, and considering how little there is of each, and the bags are immobile once down, you do need a bit of teamwork on harder difficulties. You also get a slot for a crew bonus when you reach a certain level, which applies to the other three crew members, so that could be tailored as well. Killing a shield guy requires a heap of effort, as they will look at the dude who’s shooting at them most, and you need to flank them.

#4 See this I agree with somewhat, Ive killed so many cops in this. And they were all doing there job. Its a bit silly.
But pretty much every type of enemy you mentioned is actually in this, the video probably didn’t show them well. Shields, yes, sprinters, somewhat (cloakers, who can run at you and incapacitate in one hit, but are lightly armoured), rapelling, yes, gas, yes (smoke that obscures police movements), helicopters, yes, snipers, yes, tazers, yes, heavy armoured guys yes. Theres a heap of enemy variety. Admittedley the run of the mill guys are fairly boring, but the specials are great.
#5 I wont argue with, the dialogues not amazing, and the guys can be douches.
And I’m done. Just dont dismiss it so quickly. It actually has a good cover/shield shooting mechanic as well. And some cool leveling up systems.And the devs are working on some more levels.

You know the worst part? The first mission is actually kind of fun! In that it’s an actual bank heist, not a running massacre-battle.

Still only kind of fun, though. The basic gameplay is still just ‘murder every cop that comes to get you’. The actual objectives are just more coherent: get they keycard, break the lock, use the thermite to enter the vault, then escape through the side entrance.

Also: this game was marketed towards people who wanted to rob banks. As such, I don’t think the target audience really needs justification to shoot all the police officers everywhere.

I misread 4 at first, I thought you were complaning about boring tropes like the heavy enemy who moves real slow and the light enemy who is fast and easy to kill but is the only type given an automatic weapon for some reason. But it turns out you were arguing for those to be put in?!

I haven’t gotten a chance to watch the video yet but it must be terrible.

The sameyness to me tends to come from the fact that every single policeman is charging in like some sort of nazi coke-fiend completely indifferent to the deaths of half his comrades.

I wonder if many shooters could be improved by giving the bad guys a couple of basic personality types. Say, copy Wigram’s model and make a random 25% spawn “cowardly,” 25% spawn “gutful,” and the rest “sheep” whose courage depends on whether or not they’re winning.

I have mixed feelings about the game, but some of your criticisms are spot on. Anything to make you feel more like a professional and less like ‘the bad guy’ would be appreciated. The shooting feels a little weak while it seems enemies can always hit you from very far away at any angle if so much as a little bit of your side is showing, and the shield/health values feel weird. It makes it hard to tell if you’re in very little danger or if you’re about to drop.

On the other hand, here’s me being professionally trolled in-game one night. I’m TheNick.

In any difficulty from Normal to Overkill, you definitely need to stick together, cover each others’ backs, carefully manage team supplies, handle multiple interesting objectives at once, save one another from cuffs and tasers, etc. Heat Street is by far the worst heist, with literally every other heist being far cooler. As for the copspam, yeah, it’s pretty bad, but it’s also really fun and like people have been saying, there are a lot of specials (bulldozers, dear god). Dismissing something because Rutskarn and Jibar played it like crazy people seems a bit rash.

(Seriously, I’ve been playing this game for a couple weeks now and watching them play it is almost physically painful.)

“And then hid all their faces behind masks so you can't tell who is who in the heat of battle. WHYYYY!?!?”

You…don’t know why the BANK ROBBERS have masks on? Wow…really?

They’re all light colored suits, so they do stick out from the police (which are clad entirely in pitch black body armor). You don’t need to tell which one is which from a gameplay perspective.

Now I’d agree it gives them absolutely no distinct personalities and I’d certainly argue for more visually diverse character cues along the lines of different kinds of masks, but not understanding why CRIMINALS COMMITTING A CRIME have masks on in the first place? Yikes…

You know, I’ve noticed this for a while now, but you have a very confrontational attitude that tends to bypass the argument and go right for the other person.

Yes Neil, OBVIOUSLY I understand that bank robbers wear masks. Did you think I didn’t? Does the nature of my argument really elude you, or are you just looking to start another snark fight with somebody?

You’re making an appeal to realism to explain why these guys wear masks. I think the game would be better if the characters were more distinct in their appearance. If you really think their homogeneous look is a benefit to the game then take up that argument, but if you’re going to begin by insinuating that I’m too stupid to grasp the PURPOSE of masks then you really, really need to think carefully about your reply to this.

Heck just wearing DIFFERENT masks would have been a huge improvement. Take your pick: Frankenstein mask. Clown mask. President mask. Annonymous mask, “Robin” eye mask, nylon-stocking mask, ski mask, bandanna mask, Groucho mask, facepaint mask, motorcycle helmet. Here they all have “different” masks, but they’re all clown masks. Which means the devs went to all the trouble of writing and designing four different characters, then gave each character a unique mask, but designed them all to look as indistinct and interchangeable as possible. What a waste.

This is where some variety vis race, gender, and build would go a long way to making them stand out. Example: Female, fat guy, skinny guy, sleeveless guy. Or whatever. There’s a lot you can do to make people stand out from each other, even if you insist that the bank robbers in this bonkers crazy world need to wear masks for realism sake.

Or,like plenty of games that have customizable faces and helmets have done,add an option to hide the mask(s).Yes,they are all wearing the same mask,nice.Now lets turn those things off to see who is who.

“You know, I've noticed this for a while now, but you have a very confrontational attitude that tends to bypass the argument and go right for the other person.”

I’m pretty uncompromising when I feel I have a point to make, I’m no good at sugarcoating (i.e. bullshitting), and I respect you too much to try anyway. Whatever you feel about my posts, know that they’re genuine. I won’t deny there’s probably a troll aspect to it, though if I’m ever confrontational, it’s never without a point I can’t defend.

So now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

As to your points:

“Yes Neil, OBVIOUSLY I understand that bank robbers wear masks. Did you think I didn't?”

Considering you pointed out they wore masks and then asked why in big capped letter, can ya really blame me?

“If you really think their homogeneous look is a benefit to the game then take up that argument,”

I didn’t say it was a benefit, I just pointed out that it wasn’t detrimental…cause it isn’t.

“I think the game would be better if the characters were more distinct in their appearance.”

Yeah, I know…I said that.

“Heck just wearing DIFFERENT masks would have been a huge improvement.”

Said that too.

“This is where some variety vis race, gender, and build would go a long way to making them stand out. Example: Female, fat guy, skinny guy, sleeveless guy.”

Not that I don’t agree with you because I certainly do, but as a lil side experiment, let me ask you this: Can you honestly look me in the internet eye and tell me that if there HAD been a fat guy in that group, you would NOT have pointed out how illogical it’d be to bring along someone so ill suited to such a physically demanding endeavor?

“Not that I don't agree with you because I certainly do, but as a lil side experiment, let me ask you this: Can you honestly look me in the internet eye and tell me that if there HAD been a fat guy in that group, you would NOT have pointed out how illogical it'd be to bring along someone so ill suited to such a physically demanding endeavor?”

In this circus world? No, I wouldn’t have taken exception to a fat guy.

Well, I suppose it depends on how fat. I never had any problem with L4D2’s Coach.

“Well, I suppose it depends on how fat. I never had any problem with L4D2″²s Coach.”

The difference being an issue of choice. L4D’s setting is a zombie apocalypse where everyone is there because they HAVE to be in order to survive. Robbers bring’n a fat guy to a robbery is something they chose to do and it would be a stupid choice. Frankly, you’ve made more with less.

I was just pointing out that sometimes you give the impression of someone who’s looking for problems that aren’t really problems just like I give off the impression of someone looking for a fight. ;)

“Pretty much. In a cooperative game, it is vitally important to be able to distinguish friend from enemy as well as both from the environment, quickly and easily.”

Here’s the thing, and I mentioned briefly before, but I should expand on it: You only need to differentiate the TEAM, not the individuals. The TF2 example doesn’t apply here because in that game, everyone has a specific role to play, so you need to know who each person is. This game (or at least the video we saw) indicates gameplay along the lines of L4D, where all your teammates play exactly the same, so telling them apart serves no purpose in terms of the game’s mechanics. In other words, from a gameplay perspective, it’d be perfectly acceptable if all your teammates looked exactly the same, just so long as they DIDN’T look like the enemy.

“Robbers bring'n a fat guy to a robbery is something they chose to do and it would be a stupid choice.”

1. Criminals who engage in crimes at gunpoint are not famed for their intelligence. Intelligent criminals tend to avoid crimes likely to get them shot at. I’ve not played Payday, perhaps it presupposes as criminal mastermind who is screening his underlings and makes two hours of time in the gym mandatory. But I find equally plausible the idea the criminal team is, “whoever we could find that was stupid enough to help.” Beggars can’t be choosers.

2. By the same logic, there should be any police who are fat. The existence of fat police does much to aid my suspension of disbelief.

3. This presupposes that when Shamus said “fat guy,” he meant “so obese that you can’t imagine him running around.” You can be visibly fat,but still be in good shape. In college I knew a guy who was much fatter than that, but he was a farm boy; it was a thick layer of fat over a surprising amount muscle. He was surprisingly fast, agile, and enduring.

Pretty much. In a cooperative game, it is vitally important to be able to distinguish friend from enemy as well as both from the environment, quickly and easily. In Team Fortress 2, this is done by distinctive colour schemes and silhouettes and, from what I have seen, Left 4 Dead does something similar while still going for a less stylized appearance. But with this, the characters look very much alike, both in silhouette and otherwise,so it just adds to the chaotic confusion.

Well that is a lie. I have 3 friends and our tactic is RUN LIKE SHIT and shoot the zombies that get too close. And although it is harder on L4D we could still manage that same tactic with some degree of success.

On L4D2 getting 100% completion often isn’t over exaggerating. On L4D Probably 60 – 80% is the norm. (Per Level)

But regardless of that both L4D and L4D2 have situations were it’s impossible to survive without cooperation, no matter the difficulty. Things like being grabbed. downed or hanging from a ledge are still in the sequel.

Actually, as it happens, Expert mode players are almost the worst of the lot from what I’ve seen. Advanced level players seem to be the sweet spot, whereas every Expert player I know blithely assumes that everyone knows the absolute optimal route and runs through the levels as fast as possible, leaving rooms without waiting for the rest of the team to catch up and generally just ignoring their teammates in favour of the “best way to play”.

Oh Shamus, I regularly love what you have to say about games but in this very case Pay Day is a game very very worth every cent you pay for it. While your complaints by themselves are valid, the problem here is that some of them are not true and some others are done on the game very very well.

First of all, this is a game that is supremely based around team effort and has a more primitive vision of the “Director” from L4D that Valve so much touted on it’s day, Rutskarn and Jibar had an easy time due to them being a pair of low level chars (6&8/145), playing on regular normal difficulty and playing the lest “Heist” like mission in the game. Missions, in order are divided like this: Bank Heist, Grab & Run, Rob the Dealers, Jail Escape, Gold Heist, and Diamond Heist. Of this, the Heat Street mode is the weakest of the 6 in my opinion, it’s also the one more geared towards “action packed during the whole mission.”

1.- No attempt to make your in-game goals follow any kind of logic.

This one might look like it, but the game developers (Overkill) made sure that most parts of the game were coherent and actually had some sense, in some of them you have to apply Hollywood logic for them to work, but on a game promoted as a “Movie like action” at least by the fan base themselves it works.

2.- The characters are generic clown-faced idiot men.

Wolf, Chains, Dallas and Hoxton LOOK very much the same, but on a game like this you learn to find the roles an quirks of the characters already in game, just like Francis not being just a tough biker but the “hates everything” guy too, they have their own quips and ways of talking, on top of their own ways to react to every situation, the voice over while not as extensive as, say, Skyrim, is a LOT for an Indy company (specially since the voices and character models are the programmers themselves <3)

3.- Game play that doesn't seem to require or even encourage organization and teamwork.

On the contrary, Organization and Professionalism are of the utmost importance of this game as you move on the ladder, the higher your "Reputation" (level) the more cops, special units and advanced tactics they will use. Let me tell you, once you hit a certain point running through a hallway is death incarnate.

On top of this all, enemies can rappel down from buildings and helicopters, scale up walls and use tear gas, are highly organized do not put themselves on bottlenecks unless completely forced to. It could be more yes, but for a game that could be called Indy except it has a publisher,

5.- No levity, no personality.

Every mission starts with a dossier lightly explaining the main objective AND then you are given a completely black screen with sound only with the characters starting the mission, in the case of Heat Street you hear how Matt shoots into the air and steals the Printing Molds from the Dept. of Treasury that you JUST stole and tipped off the police and got your gateway driver shot. THAT is why the police in the entire county is all over you, this explanation and "lore" you missed due to Ruts starting the stream after that point.

Yeah, I have a hard time swallowing the “Indie” part myself, but if you check out Overkill you realize that Sony had all the cash in that transaction, and Overkill is really involved in the community (Steam forums and their own forums are proof, all the patch notes are discussed there with the community so far and they even put up games and stuff)

Edit: One of the programmers admitted Chain’s model is a friend of one of the sound guys, and I believe the rest are Artists and Engineers from inside the company. They did the best they could =D

This is off topic, but I was wondering Shamus, how do you feel about the fact that 2k seems to have not only put FIRAXIS in charge of making a proper Xcom game, but pushed that fake Xcom game back to 2013 so that the real one can be put out first in 2012, almost entirely in response to community complaints?

Also do you think that FIRAXIS’ inevitable forests of tech trees will do anything to stop the first guy off the plane from getting shot dead?

And here I was thinking Heroes of Might and Magic was the only niche TBS series to manage to keep publisher interest (even with a needlessly mangled title name, but I digress)

Unfortunately, my cynicism can only see doom spelt all over it. It’ll probably bomb, very, very badly, and when the *shudders* FPS X-Com makes money out of the patrioter-than-thou Modern Battlefield crowd the industry will finally put the nail on the non-FPS gameplay design.

Sure, I hope I’m wrong. But the industry has shown time and again how adamantly stupid it can be…

Its from the makers of civilization,of course it will make money.Theyve managed to sell civ 5,despite all its weaknesses.Heck,theyve revived colonization as well.Have some faith.

As for heroes,the title change isnt the problem.Its all the terrible,terrible bugs.Its so sad when the only thing they kept from heroes 4 is its shoddy release quality.And theyve managed to do that with 2 separate publishers,which is a feat.

Don’t you mean 2 separate developers? Nival and Blackhole? The real problem is how neglectful Ubisoft is looking. Though at the very least they begrudgingly allowed the game to have a (very, very limiting) offline mode (gee, thanks Ubi). Unfortunately, it is probably for the best it be Ubisoft than what EA or Activision would inflict on the title. Or what 3DO did.

Though personally I think it’d be awesome if Paradox got a hold of it. Hells, FIRAXIS stole pretty much all the tactical part of Civ 5 mechanics from Paradox’s Fantasy Wars (and Elven Legacy).

But… shoddy releases are unfortunately becoming sort of expected with non-AAA titles. Heck, even for AAA titles. This is the age of fiscal (ir)responsibility and patching reliance. If your name isn’t Valve (or Blizzard, a lifetime ago) you either can’t afford the proper quality control or don’t care when players are more than willing to be alpha-testers. This is true even for more respected mid-range players like Paradox and Stardock…

Conflux wouldve been a nice system,if only it worked.But bugs,and non-interchangeable saves are what killed it.But even in this state,I still would prefer if ubi used something like that in their other releases.

Oh yes,one of the worst things that came with fast internet is reliance on patches.Ive been saying that for years,but people are mostly accepting it,and thats a bad thing.

I will say this in the game’s favor: it looks pretty good. Not in terms of graphical quality, but in terms of color variety; i.e. there are actually a lot of colors in the game. Blue, green, red, yellow, white, black, etc. The scene actually pops a little.

This really shouldn’t be praise, but it stands out when compared to its contemporaries. I’ve lost track of how many games I’ve played where there are entire scenes in precisely one color (usually gray or brown).

I think the Clown Masks are just a reference to the opening scene of The Dark Knight, where Joker and the Bank Robbers all wear scary clown masks (fortunately I don’t think the bank manager will suddenly bust and come after you with a shotgun). Likewise most bank heist films have the robbers wear grotesque Presidents masks.

Also, the characters actually have individual backstories. At least, on the main site of the game…

Then Rutskarn complains about Josh’s methamphetamine-overdose levels of twitchiness…

And what do you mean Bill, Francis and Zoe? What about Louis? HE is my favorite L4D character. The one guy who quite obviously had no business being part of a surviving crew (though Zoe’s only there by zombie-trope logic, because it obviously need SOME chick).

I do like to read what you write but I feel you are very unfair to the game. Perhaps you would have liked it more if you had seen a video on an other map then this one.

I really enjoy the game and will give you some feedback on your concerns.

1. Most of the objectives in the game is logical and there is also a lot of humour which is not as logical. If you try to take the game serious it is not as enjoyable.

2. In the version I play each of the characters have a distinct mask. Perhaps they changed from each player choosing mask so that they would not look the same.

3. I have played L4D and L4D2 and this is a harder game. When playing it on normal you are fine but playing it on hard you will have to struggle and constantly helping each other.

4. The opponents are about as varied as in L4D.

5. I do not agree here since you have the humour in all parts. Like if you fail they tell you that they have some contact and that you will be out of jail in no time to make an other heist. Which explains why you can play again but it is strange that they would release the worst police murders in history. There are many more examples of ingame mechanics explained with humour.